


The Shadows Where the Worlds Cross Over

by Jo Robbins (plenilune)



Category: Those Who Hunt the Night - Hambly
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Humanity, Multiple Narrators, Post-Series, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:46:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plenilune/pseuds/Jo%20Robbins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He supposes that they have accrued so many unaccountable debts between them that they cannot help but stumble against each other's worlds, blurring lines that ought to remain fixed. For Ysidro, Lydia, and James, the lines between worlds are never quite the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadows Where the Worlds Cross Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mojave Dragonfly (Dragonfly)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonfly/gifts).



> Thank you to A., B., and K. for the (short-notice!) beta! Also should probably extend a hand of gratefulness to copious amounts of coffee, candles, and Petracovich for getting me through to the end. And to my recipient: yes, thank you, too! You jump-started me into writing something for this fandom, instead of merely daydreaming about writing something for this fandom, you know, eventually.

**i.**

   He never really means to keep track of them, wisp ghostlike into corners of their lives to make certain that they are still in them, and he eventually puts it down to the fact that, after several centuries, even the great tangled mad metropolis of London begins to grow small, and coincidences become rather less unlikely. And perhaps even he is growing old and foolish, after so many centuries of un-living, foolish enough to be sentimental.  
   Once he glimpses Lydia Asher through the bright window of some large home of comfortable wealth, wearing a dress that is somehow sensible and frothy all at once; she is leaning into a conversation, her face alight with listening, and he should not be able to catch at her mood from so far away, but he can see how she is poised, bird-like, in this world, both at home and slightly uncomfortable, and at any moment she could leave this warm room of gossip and lace for something sharper and brighter, something with wings. He can see how her rich hair catches the light of the candles, and how she is busily surprising and exasperating people without, probably, even having to try.  
   He turns away, because he has no taste for this sort of world, only the thin, scholarly interest of an anthropologist – so this is how the human world works; how odd that it is still much the same as it was when he left it – or is it?; can he even remember what was in a way that does not feel as though he is calling to mind something that was told to him, something read in a book? – and seeks out his prey and his purpose in an alley somewhere else, as he has always done.  
   There are times when he cannot help but remember lights – firelight, candlelight, the faint, pale glimpse of sunlight through a faraway drawn curtain. Lights, of course, exist to illuminate, to seek out, to discover; there is very little left of him for the discovering. He has spent a long un-life making certain of this.

 

 

**  
   ii.**

   Lydia has never _especially_ wanted children: while in theory she has always sort of fancied the _idea_ of them, and moreover the idea of children that are made up of herself and Jamie (and she suspects that Jamie, who has always been a little bit lonely, is significantly more attached to the idea than she is), she is always brought up short by the thought that she would have no idea what to do with children once she had them. Neither she nor Jamie had exactly had an upbringing, well, really at all, much less one that would give either of them any indication what to do with children of their own. And they are both so busy, and eventually when she finds herself tangled up in a mess of politics, espionage, and the undead, she finds herself fervently glad that she has only got Jamie to worry about – _only _Jamie is enough to keep dread clawing at her stomach at all hours – and not a child, who would probably have to be shunted off to relatives or left with Mrs Grimes while she went tearing across the continent to find her husband. (And what would she tell her child? She wonders if she would even be able to lie, and remembers how her heart nearly broke with love for Jamie when trusting her with his mad, impossible story was the first thing he did.)  
   It must be some stupid, biological, pathological nonsense that gets her to wanting so badly to fill the emptiness of the world with life. There is no logical reason that discovering how very black the dark shadowy bits of the world are would overwhelm her with the desire to bring children into it. What is it?: the desire to have something, some part of her and Jamie, that would last after they are gone?  
   She decides that she must read herself out of this: that is how these things usually work for her.  
   Perhaps someday, she thinks, a little tiredly – how lovely it would be to _pass things on_, to teach, to be part of a creation. She catches herself when she thinks _someday, when all of this is over_, because it’s the whole world, isn’t it?, and that won’t be over, not ever, or at least she fiercely hopes not.  
   And so she determines to make as much of a glory out of this shadow-stained world as ever she can.

 

 

  
**iii.**

   James has always been very good at separating the world into exclusive sections: it is the only way one can live, really, in the Service. The problem, he begins to discover, is that the moment one world begins to leak into the compartments of the others, they all begin to bleed together.  
   He begins to wonder, almost idly, how many other people have stumbled onto this other world lingering at the edges of what he still sometimes thinks of, absurdly, as the real world: if, perhaps, there are even other worlds overlapping the edges of that one. Once, he might have been delighted at this idea, counting up all of the people and places of folklore that were too prevalent not to have root in something, and kept his eyes open so that he might spot them if they were there to be spotted. Even still, sometimes, he feels a tiny, thin, buried spark of a thrill beneath the uneasiness – he had felt it when he had begun to decipher Ysidro’s accent, when Anthea Farren stood like an echo between a long-ago past and now, when Lydia’s eyes bloomed bright with scientific fervour and he clasped her hand and realised sharply for a moment that he was standing on the edge of something impossible.  
   Of course delighting in the discovery of impossible things might be a bit simpler if the impossible world didn’t seem to spend a large amount of time attempting to dismantle his own, or extinguish it altogether.  
   Still, he watches for it without really even meaning to, watching for the places where the patches don’t quite hold or the seams are obviously newly stitched – his heart sinks a little helplessly whenever he opens the paper and finds the back pages cluttered with summaries of the deaths of people considered inconsequential, and sometimes he worries when his mind blurs or he cannot quite remember what he was doing at a particular time: is that normal fatigue and distraction and the forgetfulness of aging, or Something Else?  
   Sometimes he thinks he has caught sight of an elegantly tailored coat or sleek pale hair in a place where it would not make sense to see them, and when he looks he is sure that what he saw must have been that brush of leaves or the corner of a building but he is never sure; and he is faintly, horribly concerned that he will find himself swallowed up again and presented with a series of impossible tasks in the underdark of the world.  
   “It’s a macabre sort of club,” he comments to Lydia, while he is on one side of the table with two empty cups of tea and half a dozen books he is reviewing for a course, and she is on the other side slowly disappearing into a mass of papers. She looks up. Her glasses are crooked. “Watching other people, and wondering if they know…”  
   “That London is deathly perilous?” She pulls a wry face, wrinkling her nose. “And what a revelation that is.” She leans over the mess of papers and books and tea things and kisses him, neatly and tenderly, on the forehead, and again, lingering, on his mouth.  
   “There’s that,” he says against her hair, obscurely comforted.

 

  
**iv.**

   He is absolutely not looking out for them, and he is beginning to grow weary of the astonishing regularity in which he seems to flicker into corners of their existences, or they stray, unseeing, into the corners of his, whichever it is. Indeed, the world grows smaller, and the parts of it which were his seem to be fading away, or turning into stranger things, no longer fitting into their old shapes, like keys too damaged to turn in their locks. He would be frustrated with this, but frustration is too hot and unnecessarily busy an emotion, so he folds it carefully and puts it away.  
   Still, it is a sign of all that is not correct with the world that he keeps catching glimpses through windows and crowds, glimpses which he does not think he should be able to see so easily – he catches sight of a man in a brown coat, or a bright spray of red hair, and ducks his mind back into the shadows without even wanting to expend the energy to discover if his glimpses were correct.  
   He supposes that they have accrued so many unaccountable debts between them that they cannot help but stumble against each other’s worlds, blurring lines that ought to remain fixed.  
   And once there is an evening: it is snowing, and the sun has barely set safely low, and he is restless again, so he has been wandering, tasting dim colours, the glimmers of sound, the thin pale flickers of dreams like will o’ the wisps skimming the surface of the world –  
   She is running towards him, almost tripping over her hems, her hair in danger of coming undone beneath her hat; he has just come home from a journey; not a very long one; they catch each other, and their greeting is entirely wordless; there is brightness in his smile beneath the spectacles and in her burning hair –  
   Ysidro turns away from the sight with a feeling of distaste curling in the depths of him. This is not his world; it is life, and he has no part in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
